You Did OK
by Swiper. No swiping
Summary: Tails is a journalist, and also the world is ending.
1. 1

_Fuck you and your conventional fanfictions._

* * *

Start here.  
It always starts here.

In the dark.

They do this on purpose. Probably to intimidate me. They have no reason to intimidate me. It doesn't push me to do anything. It's just the way they are. There's no reasoning with it.

It's dark in their office because they've drawn the shades. In this blindingly bright world, they've drawn the shades. Blocked it out. Like they're part of another dimension.

They tower over me. All I can see are their silhouettes.

"What have you got for us this week, Tails?"

I shuffle my papers around, trying to get them in order. Have you ever tried sorting papers in the dark? It's not easy.

I got, uh. Shuffle. Shuffle. I got this, this piece. Here.

"What on?"

Shuffle. Shuffle. "Uh, it's about."

Pull yourself together, Tails. Shuffle.

Down and out junkies living in Jingletown.

"Drama?"

Drama and sob-stories by the dozen. I spent the week interviewing six different juicers in separate clinics. Lots of meat in this report. I promise you.

"Sounds good."

"We have your next assignment, Tails."

"Yes. Your next assignment."

Yeah. My next assignment.

"There's going to be a new highway, Tails."

Oh, you mean the Mobius 469? The one that they've been planning for quite some time now, right?

"That's right. They're finally going to build it."

"We want to do a news story about it. Put a spin on it; human interest. Get the people's opinion. No gonzo."

"No gonzo. You're our best reporter, Tails. Formidable, tres bien."

Shuffle. Shuffle. Uh, geez. Thank you.

"Give us something we can be proud of, Tails."

All right guys. I'll do my best.

"Yes. Yes. Tails, do your very very best for us."

The papers fall on the table in a perfectly neat stack. Order and chaos are reversed in this dimension. I am more than I see, because right now I barely see anything at all, and I am more than barely anything.

I'm the best damn journalist in the Mobius News circuit today.

The door opens and the world explodes into white light.  
The migraine splits my head in half.

Everything is changing.

* * *

Sunglasses. A pool chair. A strange, numb sensation.

"Tails?"

Yeah Sonic? What is it?

"Check this shit out."

Sonic's up on the high dive.

The rubber slats of the pool chair are sticking to my ass. It makes me feel fucking miserable.

Nah, not really. I've just always wanted to say that.

He runs to the edge of the board and jumps.

I don't really have the patience to watch him. I look at Knuckles instead.

"How's the blunt coming along?"

He's not really listening to me. Cutting the cigar carefully with a box knife. The grinder still full of kief.

Sonic hits the pool. But instead of a splash, I hear a series of splashes.

Cuz he's running along the water. Feet falling on top of it, like it was any hard surface. It's an almost comic display.

He runs by us. Water flies from the pool and lands on us. Lands in my mouth. Tastes salty, like dead skin.

"Jesus fuck," Knuckles shouts. "Sonic be more fucking careful next time. Shit. If you got the skin wet I'm gonna slug you like a motherfucker."

Everything is funny, if you forget what's funny.

I swirl my Jameson in its glass. It's not the kind of glass you'd normally swirl alcohol in; just a regular kitchen glass. But fuck you. I do what I want when I want, and when I want to do something I do it. It's the only way to live.

Like drinking whisky by the pool and smoking a blunt with my two best buds.

Chill, Knux. Pull that stick out of your ass and finish the blunt.

But he only gets even more frustrated. "How can I finish the blunt if he keeps getting it wet? Fuck."

My two best buds are, in all honesty, retarded. With my superior intellect, I'm kinda surprised that I hang out with them at all.

But it's hard to find anybody who matches my brain. Especially one who wants to get along with me.

I'm dying for millions.

"Jesus," Sonic finally stops running around the pool and gets out. "Didn't mean to get you all pissed off, Knuckles."

Knux sighs. "It's cool. Everything's cool. We're almost in business here." He licks up the tear in the cigar. "Where's my lighter?"

I'm not looking at him. I take a sip of my Jameson. It's in your lap, Knux.

"Ha. Don't get smart with me, faggot." He picks it up and flips it open. A Zippo. With his face on it. And you thought I was self-centered.

"How's the whisky, Tails?" Sonic stares at me, intently. He kinda makes me sick.

Could be better, I say. Taking another sip from my glass.

"What are you talking about? Jameson is prime, for its price."

I've had better, anyway.

"Shit. Well, if you wanna be a critic you can just go buy it yourself."

Sonic, I'm like twelve.

"Yeah. You shouldn't even be drinking in the first place." Sonic laughs a little bit, sounds like a dying rabbit. "So shut the fuck up."

Aside: have you ever heard a rabbit die? It's crazy. They scream really loud.

Sigh and fume. Man, why do you even care about money anyway. We're rolling in it. This is our pool. This is our mansion.

"Cuz I don't want to work to get more. We don't have an unlimited supply you know. You could help, if your reporting job paid more than shit."

I'm not a reporter. I'm a journalist.

"What's the difference."

Reporters work for television stations. Journalists write for journals. I'm a journalist, okay?

"Fuck. You know what I meant."

The mansion. The mansion is made of garishly colored stucco. Beige and pink. Towers over us like a giant fetid landfill of piñatas. Did that make sense? No? Fuck it. I'm not a poet, I'm a journalist.

The colors are hurting my eyes. Everything in the world hurts my eyes. Like I'm suddenly realizing how brightly colored everything is.

The pool is a bright aquamarine and the sky is a bright orange and the pool is reflecting the light from the sun which is shining under my sunglasses and burning my eyes in flashes, short flashes, with every residual wave surfacing and sinking.

"Tails?"

What is it?

"You feeling all right? You look kinda, uh, pale."

Nothing in this world is pale.

Fuck, man, I probably just need to get some sun. I've been kinda sick all week.

Knuckles looks up from the blunt he's drying with his lighter. "Sick with what? I don't know if you should smoke. I mean, what if it's contagious?"

My head's been hurting. It's nothing contagious. I'm probably just dehydrated or something. I say that as I take another sip of alcohol, which I know will only really make me feel worse.

I used to think I would learn to talk alone.

"Aight," Knux examines the blunt. "Looks ready." He lights the end, starts puffing.

This mansion. We're the only people around for miles and miles. And miles. And miles.

A giant expanse of neon green and then our mansion sticking out like a patch of psoriasis on Mother Nature's tit.

How difficult things are for the mind.

I should lock myself in a dark room with nothing but a few packs of cigarettes and a bottle of firewater. I should finish everything that I've started, and then I should learn how to die. Slowly, in agony. All alone. And then maybe I can finally be happy.

Locked away from this crazy bright universe.

God, it's like I'm on acid or something.

The ceiling fan in my imaginary dark room is spinning, humming, twirling. Showering the room with long furry strands of grey dust.

I'm staring at it without thinking. All I'm thinking about is the fan. The dust lands on my eyes, makes them itch.

This is all in my imagination, but then again, what isn't in our imagination these days?

The endless desert of light outside my eyes begins warping, producing Sonic. Holding a blunt and looking rather concerned.

Our hero.

"Do you want any of this?"

Huh?

"I asked if you wanted any. Or if you weren't going to smoke. Cuz I mean, it's cool if you don't, I mean, uh."

Turn to look at Knuckles. He's staring at me like I've grown a second head or something. To match my two tails.

Quintessence.

The word defines this scene.

Yeah, yeah, pass it here. I'll do it.

"You sure?"

Of course I'm sure, I say.

I do what I want when I want, and when I want to do something I do it.

That's the way it is, always has been, and always will be.

I pull a drag from the blunt. Tastes like artificial grape, like cold medicine. And weed. Who can forget the taste of weed. I once had a friend who described it as something he licked off a barbecue. We asked him why he licked a barbecue. He said he didn't know, but that he had licked a barbecue and that it tasted like weed. Then he laughed. We never learned why.

The friend? He died. A long time ago and a long way from here.

Flip the switch and the lights in my dark room turn on.

Exhale. Beautiful purple and grey and blue smoke. The dullest color in the bright bright world. The smoke glitters and blinks out of existence, which is unusual for smoke. Like something I've seen in a video game. A dying enemy. Inside of me. The death is inside of me. Did I defeat it? Did I do good?

The lines of the pool are moving. Changing. Receding into the distance. It's no longer a square but a parallelogram.

"Tails, you feeling okay? You look, uh, really pale."

I look at the house and the house is distorting. The house is distorting. The house is distorting. The house is distorting. The house is distorting.

* * *

I forgot what I was going to say here, but it was something funny but also sort of deep. Too bad I forgot it.  
Oh well. Fuck it. I'll just write this here instead: the hole in the sky is starting to open.

Don't know if that helps at all.  
I promise you it will make more sense a little later.

* * *

Snap awake.  
Where am I?

A bus.  
A moving bus in downtown.

The shops outside are all closed but their lights are still on.

What time is it?

Hey, you.

"What do you want?"

Could, uh, could you please tell me the time?

"It's one."

One?

"One in the morning."

Oh. Okay.

That doesn't really help me at all, but thanks anyway.

"You wanted to know what time it was," the man tells me. Staring at me, frowning.

Yeah. Yeah I guess I did. I did ask you what time it was.

I look down at my hands. They're covered in soot.

No they aren't. It's graphite. Pencil graphite.  
But where is my pencil?

On the floor is a notepad.  
Is it mine?

It is now.

Sir, do you happen to have a pencil?

"Why do you want it?"

I'm a report– I mean, journalist for the Mobotropolis Times. I'm working on a human interest piece and I was wondering if I could interview you.

"You're a reporter?"

A journalist, sir.

The man scoffs. "Humbug," he growls, steadies himself. "I highly doubt that."

I mean, he seems pretty old-fashioned. Bowler hat, nice ironed suit. Even has a cane. Everything about him is black and white, but still vivid. It's like every color in the world has been irradiated. It all glows. How frustrating.

Try to rub the sleep off my face. Probably just covered in it graphite and shit. I can't seem to give a fuck; I have a job and I need to do it.

Do you read the Mobotropolis Times, sir?

"I'm not going to talk to you anymore," he says. And he closes his eyes.

Sir, please. Do you read the Mobotropolis Times?

"I said, I'm not going to talk to you anymore. You're bothering me."

Fine, sir. Your failure to cooperate has been noted.

"I'm not talking to you anymore," he says again.

Drop it. Just walk away. He's probably an old poof anyway. I can only hope he'll end up in a home soon.

There are a lot of people on the bus, even though it's one in the morning. I'll be fucked if I can guess why. A lot of them are sleeping, except for the emaciated, muttering grey fox in the corner.

And a couple of raccoons sitting near the front. They look a little more coherent.

Excuse me?

The woman raises her head. "What do you want, young man?"

Man, is anybody polite in this city anymore?

Her face becomes acutely more hostile. "Well exCU-USE me."

Shit. Did I say that out loud?

Ma'am please, excuse my rude comment. I'm very tired and I have work to do–

"I ain't give you no money."

The other one wakes up. "Momma, is this queer bothering you?"

Shit.

"I ain't gonna give you none of my money, so piss off, you queer. I ain't give none of my money to no queers."

I just wanted to ask if you had a pencil.

"Now listen, queer," the boy raccoon says. "You stop bothering Momma or I'll fuck you up. I got a knife. I'll fuck you up. I ain't afraid to."

Fuck. All right, all right, I just wanted to interview you for the paper.

Momma perks up. "Which paper did you say it was now?"

I didn't. I work for the Mobotropolis Times, ma'am. I'm a journalist, and I'm conducting interviews about the new highway. The 469. Have you heard anything about it?

"Will I be credited? I wanna see my name in the paper."

Uh, yes. Of course. I credit everyone I interview. Now. Do you have a pencil?

Momma's face goes hostile again. All pinched and dark. "I told you, boy, I ain't gonna give you a pencil. You just gonna run off with it afta I give it to you, ain'tcha."

Ma'am, I promise, I only want to have something to write down the interview with–

"Ain't gonna give you no pencil, queer, now scram."

"Yeah, scram," the boy pipes up with.

Fuck this.

All right. Thanks for wasting my time.

"The queers are the worst of them," Momma says to her boy, making no attempt to keep me from hearing it.

This isn't anything out of the ordinary. It took me a couple hundred tries to find a junkie at the shelter who actually wanted to talk about it. I just had to keep moving down the table at the soup kitchen. Do you want to be interviewed about how pathetic you are? No? Do you want to be interviewed about your so-called disease? No? How about you?

Not that it was any better, once I got volunteers. Listening to teenagers whine about how terrible their parents were, so they started shooting smack to escape from home. Listening to adults talk about how Robotnik killed their wives and husbands and children, and how they were addicted to junk so they could run away from their terrible realities. But they'd found Jesus Christ and returned to the side of light and good, and he loved them, oh yes he loved them, and he wanted them to overcome their condition with his supreme love and light, and one day he would judge all of them and they would get into heaven because they were pure now that they'd accepted Jesus into their heart.

I hate people.  
Really.

They annoy me.

Plain and simple.

"You."

I turn towards the voice.

It's the strung out grey fox. His head sways slowly, back up to rest on the window. His eyes seem to focus on me.

Turn back. And I raise my leg so I can walk back to my seat–

"You're Miles Prower, aren't you."

Stop.

Put my foot down.

Do I know you?

"No," the grey fox grins and his teeth are dull brown. Some of them are whittled down to nothing.

Suddenly all I can do is stare at his mouth. His horrifying broken smile. Try not to gag. It's meth mouth. I've seen it before.

"No, you don't," he says, his face nothing more than a skull with skin and fur on it. "But I know you."

You do?

"Yeah," his head falls down again. "You're that guy. That hero guy."

No. Sorry. That's not me.

"Bullshit. That's you. There's no other yellow two-tailed fox named Miles Prower."

All right, all right, you got me. I might as well get it over with.

"Yeah. Thought as much. Where's Sawnick?" [sic] He actually pronounces it like that.

We don't work together anymore, I tell him as I sit down next to him. Pull out my pad of paper, start flipping through it. Absentmindedly I ask him: do you know anything about the new Highway 469? Any complaints or cause for concern?

Then I notice there's something written on the first page of my notepad. Something that I hadn't noticed before.

_You can always go home. Whenever you want. _

I squint at it but it doesn't change.

It's real. Not a hallucination. Weird. I could've sworn the notepad was blank only minutes ago.

Something very funny's happening to me.

The grey fox puts a paw on my leg. "Hey, look at me," he says. "Please. I want to talk to you."

His words seem lucid enough. Wonder what he's on.

His face looms closer. He's still staring at me, still grinning. I can smell the rot in his mouth. And he says: "How many clones do you got?"

I pull back.

I'm sorry?

"I asked you how many clones you had. I wanna know."

Uh, I don't have any clones.

"Bullshit," he says, pushing on my leg. Like I'm fucking with him and he knows it. "I know you got clones. Everybody got clones."

Nobody has clones, man. We don't have the technology to clone people. Not yet. But I'm sure that we will someday.

The grey fox laughs. "Fuck yeah we have the technology to clone people. Eggman made it. Invented it. That's why everybody got clones."

If Robotnik cloned us all, I'm sure we would know it. I can't imagine that it would be an easy or painless process, knowing Robotnik.

He stops laughing, and just stares at me. His eyes are bright yellow. Sickly. They look jaundiced.

I walked around Robotnik's fortresses, I tell him. All of them. After we defeated him for the last time, we went through and did an inventory of all the machines and robots and inventions he kept in that place. There was no cloning machine. I promise you, there were no clones and there was no cloning machine.

"That's what you think," he says. "You still think Eggman's got defeated."

This guy is starting to scare me.

I can assure you, Robotnik's dead. I watched him die. I didn't kill him myself, but I watched him die.

"That's the thing. You watched him die but how can you say he actually died? Just like how you're talking to me. You think you're talking to me, but how do you know you're actually talking to me?"

You're babbling.

"How do you know I'm actually here?"

Because you're talking to me and I can see you.

"But how do you know I'm actually here?"

I know you're here because I'm talking to you and I can see you. I can still feel your hand on my leg.

His hand on my leg. He pulls it back, leaving this dark trail of grime on my pants.

"Robotnik did a lot of experiments on the mind. Fuck, he's still doing them," then he lets out this harsh fucking laugh. A cackle. Kind of like how you'd expect a witch to laugh, just in a deeper register. Sharp and punctured.

Puncturing my brain. Making it bleed.

Shut up.

But he keeps laughing. Starts hacking. A deep rattle.

Shut up. Please, just shut up.

My hands grip my face and pull my skin off and it snaps, breaks into a million pieces on the floor.

I fall on the ground and try to pick it all back up. But everybody's noticed now and they're starting to scream, even Momma and her baby boy and the old fart, they're all edging away from me, the dirty bag of bones just keeps laughing and coughing, and laughing, and coughing, and I'm breathing hard as I pick up something, and it's my cheek, and I try putting it back on my face and getting it to stick but it keeps falling off.

And I start crying. I can't help it.

I want to go back to my dark room. My dark room. Please. I just want to go back to my room. Please just let me go back.

Turn off all the lights and draw the curtains.  
Something's out there and it's looking for me.


	2. 2

The whole ripping my face off thing didn't happen.  
Sorry, I was exaggerating. A lot.

Back to business.

Where did I go after the bus? I probably got off at the next stop and flew home.  
It's honestly not that hard to.

So why was I on the bus in the first place?  
You're thinking too much.

Actually, I don't know, either. But am I worrying about it? No. Then why should you?

So in this space, I was originally supposed to act out a scene where I come home and my room is a mess. My dark room; a mess. Order and chaos are reversed in this dimension. No foul play, though. No Stencil and Profane here. I did it myself. Out of neglect. Anyways, I forgot the entire scene, so if I can't remember it what good is it writing it down?

Oh wait. I guess the entire point of the scene was to figure out that I don't know what the mansion is for. The rest of the mansion. That I'd never even been in it and I didn't really know what was outside of my room.

And I would feel very alone.

But I forgot the whole thing.  
How can you expect me to work with this?

* * *

The next day is sunny.  
Every fucking day is sunny in Mobius.

In all the sad twelve years of my life not once has it ever rained. Or been overcast, at least. The sun is a giant tattoo needle pounding the world against my eyeballs, inking it in. Does that make sense? No. But that's the only way I can explain it.

Still wearing my sunglasses. Sensitivity to light. Self-diagnosed. I'm starting to wonder if I have brain problems. But of course I don't tell anyone. Just go along with it with a great big fucking smile on my face.

Sonic and I are on the roof. The roof of the second tallest point in our mansion. That would be the roof above the upper bar, which is actually a room I've spent quite some time in. And by spent time I mean getting drunk and stupid.

The tallest point in our mansion is this weird bell tower thing that I've never really seen before. It has shuttered windows that are inexplicably painted olive green. Doesn't really match the rest of the house. But again, the house reminds me all of infected tissue on the skin of Mother Earth.

Wasn't that what I said? Something like that?

Anyway. Sonic is hitting golf balls into the distance with a wood. Not the material, the golf club. I know jack-shit about golf clubs, so I actually had to look that up. Honest. I could toss around the phrases "nine iron" and "putter" but I wouldn't really understand what each one is used for.

Woods are made out of metal. How difficult things are for the mind.

"So why are you writing about a highway?"

I'd say Good question. But it always helps to pretend to believe in what you're doing. If not for yourself, for other people.

It's a new highway, Sonic. That's where the news is.

"Yeah, yeah, I got that part." He hits another golf ball and it goes sailing in the air. "But where's the con-tra-vurr-see?" [sic] He means controversy. He just thinks it's funny to pronounce big words like he's got a drawl.

Not that controversy is a big word in the first place. Most people will get it. Eminem used it in a popular rap song. And Eminem is no Aesop Rock. But that's beside the point.

There's always controversy, I tell him. You just need to know where to look.

"Well, give me an example. How is a new highway controversial?" Sonic sets another golf ball on the tee.

All right. For example.

He raises the wood in the air.

Let's say there's a well-traveled road that goes the same direction. Parallel to the new highway, if you will.

Down comes the club. Smacks right into the ball, which again sails up-up-up into the air and far-far-far away.

And there's a ton of businesses on this road. Small restaurants, grocery stores. Infamous for their commitment to great food and friendly atmosphere.

"Yeah, so?"

So when the highway opens, Sonic, all the drivers who drive on that road will use the highway instead, and business for these businesses will be next to null.

"Oh."

I mean, that's only one scenario. If the highway is going to travel through certain urban areas, property could lose value. Worst case scenario is that whole neighborhoods would be displaced.

"Why?"

You know, to make room for the highway.

Sonic looks at me like I'm retarded. "You can't be serious," he says, waving his hand dismissively. "Sally wouldn't do that. Would she?"

I don't know. Maybe if she was feeling particularly heartless that morning.

"No, she wouldn't," he sets another golf ball on the tee. "Sal's got a big heart. She's not that kind of a ruler."

She does what's best for the masses. She can't care about everybody. One way or another somebody's going to get fucked, I'm sure.

I take another sip of my Tequila Sunrise.

I hate Tequila Sunrises. Can't remember why I made myself one.

"You remember hanging out with Sal?" Sonic almost sounds kind of sad. No, not sad. Nostalgic's the right word.

Of course I remember, I say. Taking another sip of my drink. That was only a couple years ago. Well, okay, seven years ago.

"You used to call her Aunt Sally." He shoots another golf ball. Putting it like that makes me think of ejaculation, which kind of makes me feel sick. Golf ball sperm. Golf club penis. Freudian metaphors, all of it. Golf is a man's game.

I know, I tell him. Those years are formative, really. Eventually they will all be a blur. Best not to dwell on them too much.

"Don't be so depressing," Sonic sounds like he's angry at me. "You should remember Sal fondly, after all she's done for you. Just because you're a reporter doesn't mean you have to be her enemy."

I'm a journalist. And I think while it's nice that we were friends, I need to be unbiased. In order to be fair. You can't fool all the people all the time, etc.

Cult of personality.

Sally doesn't really have one, but picturing it is pretty funny. Couldn't imagine what we'd put in a quote book of hers. Memoirs, of course. But there are no glorified murals of her likeness around Mobotropolis. Still, she could almost be legendary, in a way. Riding around in that shiny black limo of hers. But, from personal experience, King Acorn is more of the legendary one.

Or imaginary, depending on your point of view. A lot of the things King Acorn's done were fabricated by folk mythology and time. Rumors.

Sonic knocks another ball and off it goes, never to be seen again.

Don't you ever go find the golf balls? Or do you expect the caddy we don't have to do it.

"Hell. I could, if I wanted to. It wouldn't take me more than five minutes, if I run fast enough." Sonic isn't looking at me. He's looking at the hills surrounding the house. "But fuck it. I could just buy more. They're not that expensive."

We don't have an unlimited supply of money, Sonic.

"Oh ha ha very funny. At least I'm spending it on golf balls and not booze for you, drunkie."

Booze goes in my stomach and then to my liver and kidneys and then to the crapper. The booze bottle goes in the recycling, where it goes to the recycling plant and gets turned into little glass eyes for the unfortunate orphans. You, on the other hand. You're just shooting golf balls into the wilderness, without caring where they land or who they land on. That's just wasteful.

"Jesus, Tails. Way to go all Sonic Sez on me."

Haha. You fucking deserve it, filming all those annoying PSA commercials. All your fault.

Sonic doesn't seem to care. He turns, grinning. "Hey. I thought they were sort of helpful at the time. At least. Kids, don't do drugs. Kids, tell somebody if someone tries to grab your no-no place. Kids, don't play in the fucking dryer." Then he starts laughing.

I can't help but laugh too. I wonder how much tequila I put in this Sunrise.

He sits down next to me, on the same pool chairs we've now moved to the roof. Somehow. Fuck if I know. He probably did it.

"Anyways, I think you're approaching this the wrong way. Asking the wrong people," he says. "About the highway, I mean."

Oh? You got any better ideas?

I hate it when people tell me how to do my job. Even though they're just trying to help. For some reason it pisses me off. I'm too proud of being the best damn journalist on the Mobius circuit, so I guess I like to think I can do it myself.

"Yeah. Those theoretical examples. You should interview people who live and work out in the way of the highway. Maybe they'll have some more pertinent things to say about it."

Sounds like too much work.

"Do you want to do a good job or not?"

Yeah, yeah, I want to do a good job.

"Well then, why don't you just drive out there and look around? Somebody's bound to have an oh-pin-yun about it." [sic] He means opinion.

I'm twelve, Sonic. I can't drive. Also I've been drinking.

"God, why do I even let you have alcohol in the first place."

You could drive me out there. Come with me. We'll have a day in the country.

"Why should I drive you?"

Because you have nothing better to do. Unless you're planning to putt around all day, pun intended.

Sonic sighs. Seemingly unhappy. "All right."

The sky from up here looks like it stretches on forever. All around us is grass and a few trees. Nature's golf course. Going on and on and on forever. Nobody except us here. Nobody else around for miles. If I weren't wearing my sunglasses, I wouldn't be able to see it. Too bright.

Sonic?

"Yeah Tails?"

Have you been seeing anything strange lately?

Sonic looks at me, frowning. "Like what?"

Like, walking nightmares. Vivid hallucinations. Or just even distorting shapes. Also, any sensitivity to light?

"Why? What's wrong?"

Nothing. Just wondering if somebody's putting ergot in our water or something.

"Have you been seeing shit? Even without getting stoned?"

I take another sip from my Tequila Sunrise. Silently. It's starting to occur to me that I might actually be sick. Really sick. What would I do if I was?

"Tails?"

Maybe I'm dying.

What if I'm dying?

I'd just lock myself in my room. My dark room. With all the shades drawn and the lights and the ceiling fan off, I'd lie down on the floor and I'd learn how to die.

"Tails."

I'm fine, Sonic.

"Then why the weird question?"

The sky stretches on forever and ever. Shooting towards the horizon, all the hills and trees stretching past me, turning into this beautiful orange and green tunnel, until it all begins melting around me, turning into liquid, turning indistinct from each other I can't even tell the difference between the ground and the sky anymore.

A golf ball hurtling through space.

I wonder if I'm getting enough sleep. Maybe that's what's wrong with me.

Just to assuage him.  
And by assuage I mean lie.

* * *

René Descartes was the guy who came up with the phrase: I think, therefore I am.  
Of course, it was originally in Latin.

I can't find the Latin translation at the moment. Nor do I know it by heart. I'm not good with Latin. Never studied it. But I digress: I think Descartes was also the guy who came up with the concepts of "a priori" and "a posteriori" knowledge, but that could've originated with Socrates or Aristotle, even.

I'm not a big philosophy buff. I don't ignore it entirely, that's for sure. But for the most part I think it's all bullshit. Why even bother untangling the impossible knot if you can't untangle it at all? It's not worth it. Fighting something that's much bigger than you.

Later schools of thought get a little more tolerable. I like hearing more about the shock of being human. Existentialism, absurdism, nihilism; all of those make for grade-A entertainment. Debating it is a different story. My own thoughts are my own, and if people want to talk about theirs I'll listen. Debates just tend to make me a little annoyed with other people.

As if they weren't already frustrating.

In general, the school of skepticism–which Descartes founded–says you can't ever be sure of anything. Not even your own existence. Not on the material level of things, anyway. It's a lot like solipsism, which says you are the only thing that exists because you can't be sure of anything outside of your own mind. You've done a lot of work, creating this universe that you are the center of. Everyone and everything exists solely to comfort you in your own sad shell.

Not a lot of people are skeptics. Or solipsists. Just goes to show: we're too lonely as creatures to let ourselves be the only thing that exists.

Personally? I think it all exists to make us amused. I mean, you could argue that we're not always happy and that means we're not always amused, but you could also say that, at the core of it, emotions are really just our way of entertaining ourselves. And when we get bored of the universe to a certain extent, we kill ourselves.

The world is our playground.  
We won't be happy until we burn it down.

* * *

If you knew without a doubt that God existed.  
If God told you to get addicted to heroin, would you do it?  
I would.

I mean, I would have to. Wouldn't have much of a choice.

So why is this in here and what does it have to do with the story? Well, it seems like anything goes nowadays. I'm the one who's got the brain problems here. So shut the fuck up.

* * *

Screen cuts back to reality.  
It may suck but it's all we've got.

Ha, ha.

Apparently I'm sitting in the front of Sonic's convertible, gripping a White Russian in an old-fashioned. Gripping it hard. My knuckles are whiter than the Russian. Is that supposed to be funny? Because it's not. Sorry; excuse my inability to crack jokes. I'm a journalist. I'm not really paid to be funny for people.

So I turn to Sonic and I ask him: How long have we been flying?

And he looks at the dashboard clock and sez: "Oh, about forty minutes."

How long have I been out for?

He doesn't look at me. He keeps his eyes on the road. If there's one thing to say about Sonic the Hedgehog, he is an unnecessarily safe driver. For someone who doesn't have to drive at all. But there are many things to say about Sonic, and I haven't the patience or the attention span to list them all.

"You haven't, Tails."

I haven't.

"No. You've just been sitting here, silently holding your drink."

Have I?

"Yeah. I'd even ask you questions and you'd just sit there, staring into space. You sure you're feeling all right?"

I don't know.

"What were you thinking about?"

I, uh.

"You remember?"

No. I don't.

Sonic looks at me. Finally. But his gaze is concerned and his mouth is stuck in a frown. "What's going on with you?"

With me?

"Yeah. Tell me."

You ever get that uncanny feeling that you're not all you're supposed to be?

I don't mean not reaching your full potential. Well, maybe I do. It's a little difficult to explain. Like you're a spiritual amputee. Does that help? No? Or a philosophical amputee. I once had feelings. Or a soul. And somehow, somewhere back there, it got cut out of me. Or off of me. And now I'm getting phantom pains, visions of the void inside of me leaking into my mind. My lack of a soul.

Of course I don't say any of this to him. I tell him: I've just been feeling a little out of sorts. I'm considering going to a doctor. Or a therapist. I'm wondering if something's really wrong with me.

"What kind of things?"

I dunno. Maybe schizophrenia or something.

"Schizophrenia?"

It's a mental disorder. You hallucinate and things. If left untreated, it gets worse. Drives people insane.

"Shit," Sonic says. "Oh god." Like he's actually upset.

I'm the one with the brain problems. Don't worry about it. It's probably nothing.

"This is serious, Tails," the hero sounds like he's almost about to cry. "Goddammnit. Why can't you just be fucking serious about something for once?"

Raised in this kind of world and with this kind of life I find it hard to take anything seriously.

He doesn't say anything in reply. I probably hit a nerve.

Sonic practically raised me. He's my father and my mother and my older brother and my hero all in one. Sure, there were others who had a role in it. Bunnie, Rotor, Antoine, Sally. Aunts, uncles. Distant relatives who became more distant as the years dragged on. They taught me everything I know, but slowly abandoned me when they had nothing more to offer. When they had better things to do instead of take care of me. Like my parents. I don't blame them. As bitter as I am towards them, I don't blame them. They had to do more important things. Sonic took care of me. Kept taking care of me. And when I could take care of myself, I fought with him–for him–defending our city from Eggman.

I grew up and I don't need him anymore. At the age of twelve.  
But I don't really have anywhere else to be so I just stay in the same place.

So why do you take anything seriously, Sonic?

"Me?"

Yes. You. Does it look like I'd be talking to anybody else?

"I don't know, acid boy. For all I know you could be having a schizophrenic attack."

He's rendered me speechless. Not jaw-dropping, just livid. Locked up. Anything I want to say to him right now, I don't. I'm smarter than that.

"I guess I'd like to say that I know I'm not a very good role model."

No shit.

"It's like when an author duplicates another author's style and man-ur-ri-zums [sic], but entirely misses the meaning by the style."

What's with your sudden attention to literature? I didn't think you had it in you.

Sonic is trying to ignore me and just talk: "Look. I know I always came across as carefree. The wise-cracking hero character. Un-cun-serned [sic] with everything."

Your point?

"Well I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm sorry. I never wanted to be like that."

His knuckles gripping the wheel. His hands are shaking with tension. I can't bring myself to look away from it, even though for some reason it disgusts me. Between his knuckles, a small yellow eye opens, blinks, then shuts forever.

"It was fake. So fucking fake. You have no idea."

I don't say anything to him. I just keep watching his hands and sip from my drink. The eye doesn't open again. I can't even see it anymore, like it blended seamlessly back into his hand. A portal to another dimension, right on the back of Sonic the Hedgehog's hand. Only big enough for an eye to look through.

"I'm sorry I put you through it. I'm sorry I made you assume everything was okay. That it was okay to not concern yourself with anything. I was frightened. Scared shitless. So afraid that we wouldn't make it. I had to do something, something to help me be strong."

A defense mechanism.

"What's that?"

A defense mechanism is a psychological tool we all use. Whenever something makes us uncomfortable, makes us feel infringed upon, we do something to make ourselves feel better. Defensive personalities are considered one of those.

"Why are you looking at my hand?"

No reason.

Sonic shifts, still driving on the road. "Anyways. I'm sorry I made you act like an idiot. I'm sorry that I act like an idiot. It's something I intend to change."

The landscape outside is flat. Flatter than a pancake. You can see for miles and miles in every direction. It's all just plains. Grass and street and sky and clouds. Bright and pulsing clouds in a pale yellow sky.

But in between the clouds there is a hole.

A pure white circular hole. Flawless.  
Only slightly smaller than the Moon.

Shit.

"What?"

Shit, Sonic! Pull over!

The world outside us begins jerking, the car panicking for the both of us. We land on the shoulder, half on the road and half in the grass.  
I feel sick.

Get out of the car.  
Slam the door shut.

Sonic gets out. "What the fuck is wrong with you, Tails? What is it?"

I point up at it.  
Do you see that?

It's like a straw. A giant tube that punctures the sky.  
Sucking me into it. All I can see is white.

"Shit. What is that?"

Suddenly I feel very hopeless.  
We're doomed. All of us.

"What the hell is that, Tails? Do you know?"

No. I don't know what that is.

I haven't blinked in a minute. A full sixty seconds.  
But nothing has changed in the void.

But you see it too.

"Yeah, I see it."

So it's not just me, then?

He doesn't respond.

There is no wind.

I see the grass swaying.  
But I don't feel the wind.

Inside my dark room, the lights turn off. The walls begin to settle, to make noise like someone's knocking on them. The darkness outside gains weight. It presses me. Pins me to the floor. Grinds me into dust.

I don't really care.  
I'm scared shitless.

* * *

You know what they say.  
When you look into the void, the void also looks into you.

But you know: when you look into the void, you also look into the void looking into you looking into it. Looking into you looking into it looking into you.  
Jackass.


	3. 3

Let me describe Mobotropolis. You've been there a thousand times in a thousand different alternate versions and so have I, but it's really necessary for me to describe it to you. To show you how shitty it really is.

Climate: mediterranean. Between tropical or maritime and still pretty close to the ocean. Surrounding it is savannah. Large hills and fields covered with grass. A few trees here and there. Hot summers, never humid. Mild winters. Coldest it ever gets is forty degrees, and that's usually in the wee small hours of the morning. Fog and clouds are common. Rain is not. Thunderstorms rarely happen and tornadoes never touch the ground.

Mobius is a beautiful country. It's the people that are the problem.

Let's say you drive to Mobotropolis by 69. Best highway number in the world. You're driving on 69 North from Station Square, surrounded by all those beautiful hills and grass and oak trees, and then the hills suddenly start to get less green. Grass begins to dry out. Eventually it starts to die, completely disappear from the land itself. Until it's all just ugly, revealed dirt.

Then the stink starts. Equal parts rotting flesh and landfill gas. It's out here that the low-income houses start cropping up in huge patches. Like eczema. These corpse-colored apartment complexes outline the city.

It doesn't change for a while after the outsider apartments start. Eventually suburbs start showing up. Not very wide, but long. Receding into the hills. Huge signs show up and they bend over the highway, forcing you to look at them. McDonalds, Starbucks, 76. Shopping malls, huge residential complexes, movie theaters, hotels. This is where most of the people live. There are a good 900,000 Mobians living in the Mobotropolis-adjacent area alone.

It's a stink bomb ticking down, ready to burst.

Eventually large buildings appear in the distance. High-rises. Skyscrapers. Most of them are old, more old than new. Relics of our civilization, before Eggman came and wiped it all out. We haven't even cleaned the entire city up yet. The older buildings still show signs of damage. There was a coalition a while back, but everybody seems to have lost interest in it.

Most of the businesses in the downtown area are on otherwise barren roads. Some alleyways have been turned into shantyvilles. Just swarms and swarms of the poor and homeless fashioning hives out of corrugated tin and breeding in the alleyways. Nobody's sure how to address this problem. You'll get fancy restaurants next to flophouses. Daycare centers next to drug rehabilitation centers. The whole of the city is disorganized.

The environment, too, seems out of place. When you get into the inner city, it inexplicably becomes dry and smells of asphalt and gasoline. Most Mobotropolitans believe that the poor environment is Robotnik's fault, but in all honesty we never helped it much.

You can get off on 87: "Acorn Pkwy.", and drive around the whole of Mobotropolis. You can see the University of Mobius, Mobotropolis campus. You can see the Depardieu mansion, which was owned by a distant relative of Antoine who believed the spirits of those she slayed in battle were haunting her so she commissioned construction workers to never stop adding rooms to her mansion. You can see the Acorn Palace. Contrary to the name Sally doesn't live or work in it, since it's been turned into a museum dedicated to her father. She works in the Senate, which is the top several floors of a skyscraper dedicated to government business.

The new highway 469 goes straight through 87 to the suburbs and outlying towns around Mobotropolis, and eventually connects back up to 69. Hence the number. I don't know if they plan on going through any neighborhoods. What's monumental about it is that it's the first highway we've constructed in a long time.

If you drive on 87 all the way through, eventually spits you out on 262 North to Albion, which you can take to 4 East to Soleanna, and that gets you pretty close to Knothole. There's no road out there. Nobody lives there now. The entire town is deserted, huts and all. But I can't really blame them. Nobody wanted to live there in the first place.

So where's Sonic's mansion? Can't tell you. If I did, you might let the secret out.

* * *

We don't really do anything anymore.  
Heroes on hold.

If that makes any sense. Which it doesn't really, but I can't describe it any other way, so you'll just have to deal.

We just don't do anything. We sit around the house all day getting high or drunk.

That's why I got the journalism job. I was sick of doing nothing all day. Sonic, on the other hand: Sonic doesn't even work. Sonic doesn't even leave the house, most days. I haven't even been in most of the rooms here. Asked Sonic about it, and he said there wasn't really any point to looking around the house. He's got a cleaning robot who dusts and oils everything, but for the most part it's full of shit. Junk, I mean. Gifts and trinkets that were given to him. Portraits of him. Statues of him. Thank you for returning our city, they say. Thank you for defeating Robotnik and his evil Robotocizer®. Thank you for defending Mobius. Thank you for endorsing our product. Thank you for the wonderful evening. Thank you for your donation to our charity. Thank you for the blowjobs. Etc.

I've only been in these rooms:  
• My bedroom.  
• My bathroom.  
• The pool and adjacent showers.  
• The bar.  
• The kitchen.  
• The living room.  
• The water closet near the kitchen.  
• The secondary entertainment room.  
• The garage.

And all the hallways in between them. Most of the rooms I haven't been in remain closed. I wouldn't even be able to tell you how to get around the house. Usually I just follow the noises.

My bedroom and Sonic's bedroom are yards apart. I've never been in his room. In fact, I've never seen him go in his room. He just kinda disappears when it gets dark. And I remember when the two of us used to share a bunk bed. No, I'm not a faggot. I don't necessarily miss it. It's just interesting to see how things change.

This chapter has been too explanatory.  
But fuck it. I'm not gonna edit it.

The two of us are sitting on the couch. Sonic's snoring. I'm watching the television.

There's a picture of the hole in the sky.  
A panorama of downtown Mobotropolis.

REPORTER: ...this object appeared in the sky sometime yesterday afternoon and has not dissipated since. Astronomers are still examining the object, and filed this report: "There seems to be no physical properties to this object, or at least no physical properties that we can yet detect. All scientific tests read that the object is absorbing light, although from our vantage point it appears to be reflecting it." An emergency address about this situation was issued by Sally Acorn only hours ago.

Screen cuts to an image of Sally standing on a podium, in front of the Acorn Palace. She's flanked by security guards, one of which I recognize as Bunnie Rabbot, now de-robotocized. None of them appear to be too happy.

SALLY: Citizens of Mobius. This is no time to panic. Can't stress this enough: this is not the time to panic. Our top astronomers have assessed the object and have decided that it does not pose a threat to us as of yet. However, our space department is still watching it, keeping their eyes and ears on it diligently. If anything changes about our threat assessment, we will notify you immediately about the measures you can take to prevent any damage from occurring to your person and your property. That is all.

Screen cuts back to the reporter sitting at his desk.

REPORTER: The princesses' words fell on deaf ears however, as most Mobians prepare for what will surely be a state of anarchy.

Screen cuts to a grocery store, where a swarm of elderly women are fighting over boxes of donuts.

REPORTER (v.o.): Sales in grocery stores boomed today as Mobians stocked up on supplies. A poll showed that a startling 74% of all Mobians–countrywide, not just Mobotropolitans–view the object as some kind of threat which could possibly damage the earth. A further 70% of that 74% believe that it is, in fact, God or another religious figure calling souls back to heaven.

Screen cuts to a bear standing in a parking lot. He wears a pair of ripped overalls, and stands in front of a small monster truck.

BIG MIKE: Yeah, yeah, I reckon I'll be spendin' th' rest o' this week in mah bomb sheltur [sic]. Got all mah fav'rit foods, got mah barrbiekyoo [sic] all ready. Hoo boy it's gonna be a good week. Gotta go out in sty-ul [sic].

Screen cuts back to downtown Mobotropolis, although this time the camera's pointed at the street. A throng of Mobians are wandering around, waving banners which appear unintelligible. Probably on purpose. They seem to be humming something in unison.

REPORTER (v.o.): Strange parades have broken out in downtown Mobotropolis as people react to the object's appearance. It is surmised that a new apocalyptic cult has emerged in response to the object. Public demonstrations of self-flagellation have suddenly become common. Some Mobians have appeared to leave their jobs in order to go sing praises to "The Window", as they refer to it. We got the opinion from several followers of this new religious order.

Screen cuts to three protestors holding signs. Their faces are blurred, but the bodies suggest that these Mobians are fairly young. 18-21. Their signs read: DEATH TO THE SINNERS, GOD LOVES THE PURE. Etc.

MAN: The Window is a gateway to heaven.

WOMAN 1: A window to heaven.

WOMAN 2: Heaven is pure white. The purest white of all.

WOMAN 1: The Window is a sign. A sign that God is unhappy with us.

WOMAN 2: God is calling us back to heaven.

MAN: Where will you go when the world ends? Will you join us in the pure white light of heaven? Or will you be in trapped forever in the darkness of hell?

WOMAN 2: And Jesus will call us and summon our souls through the Window and when we turn around it will be a Door.

MAN: Repent, all sinners. The end is nigh.

Screen cuts back to the reporter.

REPORTER: We'll have more news on this subject as the situation resolves itself. One way or another, this humble reporter thinks that the situation will eventually subside when the object disappears, though the economic damages it will inevitably cause will be...

Turn the television off.

People annoy me.

Plain and simple.

All of them.  
Even my so-called friends.

Sonic is still sleeping.  
I guess there's no use waking him up.

The question is: Do I think the world's really ending?

Part of me wants to put it down to hype. Just because some phenomena occurs that we've never seen before and we're not sure what it is doesn't mean that it's unnatural. It could be something normal, something that's entirely normal that we haven't observed yet. Something in space, maybe. Ice particles stuck in a perfectly lenticular formation. In space. Or maybe it's something harmless. Extraterrestrial contact.

But another part of me believes it. My gut feeling, my instincts. Telling me to run.

But I don't know where I can go. Nowhere. I can't go anywhere to escape from it.  
Not even my dark room. My dark room is a bomb shelter. My dark room is my prison.

Yet another part of me believes that it's part of Robotnik's trickery. Some part of me thinks it would worth the trip to find his collected data and research and see if he had anything on it, to run through the list of inventory. But how much of it still exists, and how much of it has Sally incinerated out of spite? That's up to luck.

Maybe I should follow everybody else. Maybe I should follow their example. Maybe I should prepare for the end. Nothing can be done, but I can prepare myself. At least.

Not really scared anymore, no. It's turned into something else. Regret? No. Just apathy.  
It's weird. Something is wrong with me.

Apathetic, even though all the twelve years of my life were a waste of time.  
Apathetic, even though I'll never be able to experience life as an adult.  
Apathetic, even though I'm going to die.  
Apathetic, even though the world I know will cease to exist.  
Apathetic, even though the things I want to do the most will probably never happen.

I'm not really sure what to expect. I'm schizophrenic, I think. Suffer from hallucinations. I could be hallucinating this entire event.

This could all be a bad dream and I'll wake up from it anytime now.

Get up from the couch.  
Sonic doesn't stir.

Walk down the hallway to the pool.

It's a bright beautiful day in Mobius. Again. The sky is a bright yellow. There is no wind. No clouds even. Just the vibrant yellow sky with a giant hole in it. Who's to say if it's even a hole? The sun is just coming over the hills to the East. The hole in the sky is shining too, making the sky even brighter. So it looks like there are two suns in the sky. The void even lights the night up a little, so we no longer have darkness on our planet. It's beautiful, in a kind of ominous way.

I'm not sure what to make of it. Any of it.

It could all be a bad dream.  
I'll wake up from it any second now.

The water in the pool splashes above me.  
Roaring in my ears. Pressure.

I open my eyes.  
Open my mouth to the chlorinated liquid.

My dark room begins flooding.  
The desk and chairs rising in the onslaught of water.

Eyes closed.  
I'm weightless.

* * *

Hey Knuckles.

"Wassup, Tails. How you been?"

I've been doing okay.

"Just okay? You've seen this weird shit on the news?"

Yeah, I've seen it. The Window or whatever they're calling it.

"Ha. Yeah."

Crazy times call for crazy people.

"You can say that again dude. You know, if Sonic and you want to ride out the craziness, you can always come crash at my place in Echidnapolis. I've always got room at my place."

Yeah, sure. I'll ask Sonic. When he wakes up.

"Dude's asleep? It's like, one in the afternoon."

Sonic's recuperating. Yesterday I actually got him to drive me out to the country, to interview people.

"Damn. So you actually made him do some work?"

That's my guess.

"Shyeeit. [sic] Hahaha. Lazyass."

Anyways, you got any weed over there?

"Uh," Knuckles goes quiet for a little bit. "I don't really want to talk about it on the phone."

Why?

"Don't know who's listening in."

C'mon Knuckles. Nobody's listening in. We're heroes. This behavior is typical of us.

"Still, that doesn't mean Sally won't have a field day getting our asses locked up."

Whatever you need to tell yourself.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Don't worry about it. Anyway. You got any?

"Fuck, man. Just come over and see for yourself."

All right. I'll tell Sonic when he wakes up. Be seein' you.

"Yeah. Take care of yourself, man."

The phone line clicks, then goes dead.

* * *

Knuckles the Echidna won't be appearing in this story anymore.

* * *

Do I believe in God?  
No.

Well. I guess that's a tough question to answer.

Robotnik was the closest thing to a god I ever knew. Never seen and never to be approached, but always worshipped. And we did worship him, even though we hated him. He did things we couldn't do. He knew more than we could ever comprehend. He had it all, and we were jealous of that. And so we worshipped him. Spoke of him daily. He was the creator of our entire world, our reason for living in Knothole. And the only reason our existence continued was because he allowed it to.

He was god. He was our god. And we overthrew him.

There was the alternative, too. The force of good. God, who begat unto us his son, Jesus. Who shed his blood for us so that way we could be saved. Purified us so that way we would be free of sin.

And I always wondered where this God was when Mobotropolis needed him.

One of my earliest memories is watching Bunnie. Aunt Bunnie. Kneeling in the mud in front of her makeshift altar. The altar was also made of mud. Covered in a dirty, mud-stained cloth. Tiny candles, sculpted from beeswax and lit by some method I never figured out. The cross on the altar was really just two twigs tied together with a thin wire she must've ripped out from a SWATbot. She had her hands clasped together, one flesh and one metal. And she kept on muttering something underneath her breath. It started slowly at first, then began to get more feverish. It scared me. I didn't understand what was going on.

She tried to make me do it too. She tried to get me to kneel with her. She said it was proper. The right way to do it. God existed, and Jesus existed, and I needed to thank them for every day of my existence. With prayer. Praising everything they created. All of Mobius was to bow down to them, their Gods. And if they felt benevolent enough, all the Mobians would get to go to Heaven.

Maybe I was just too young to understand it.

God loved the just, she told me. God loved the wise, the strong, the meek, and the brave. God loved all his good creatures, and all the evil ones he would shun. He would cast his evil children down to suffer in Hell for all of eternity. He would come to his good children in their time of need, and he would intervene and save all the good creatures, because God loved the good.

And I always wondered where this God was when Mobotropolis needed him.

Maybe I was just too young to understand it, but I wondered why God never stopped Robotnik for us. We were the good ones, right? I'd ask Sally. We are the good guys, aren't we? And she'd always reply that we were. Of course we were. Robotnik is the evil one. And then I'd ask Bunnie. We are the good guys, right? She'd say Of course, sugar. Of course we're the good guys.

But then why does God ignore us, Aunt Bunnie?

She'd fall silent. She wouldn't say anything for a while, and then: Sometimes God works in mysterious ways, honey. And that's all she'd say. Like that was supposed to answer my question.

But I think deep down she knew. She knew that if the God she loved existed, he would've intervened. We would've seen proof. But it scared her. Obviously, it scared her. And she clung onto this empty belief, because she was scared. His nonexistence made her belief in his existence stronger.

Robotnik was our god. Our true god.  
And he was not benevolent. He was not kind.

God did not love us.

* * *

Okay, okay.  
I'll spill.

I was standing outside of a daycare center. Looking in.

It was closed. There were no children in it. But for some reason I had my hands pressed up against the glass and I was actually riveted, staring at this empty daycare center. Watching the toys sit in their baskets. The television turned off. The Grateful Dead bears painted on the walls captured mid-stroll, like they were going on a make-believe two-dimensional walk. The lights were on. Somebody had left the lights on. I guess it was supposed to deter thieves looking to steal the television.

I know it's creepy. Daycare centers in general. But I know that what I was doing seemed strange, too.  
Couldn't remember why I was outside the daycare center. Probably was on my way someplace. Some restaurant. It was getting late and I was probably hungry. Or drunk, and walking around the city.

Sometimes, when you save a city, it pays to walk around it and see what you've saved. I'm sure you don't know what that feels like.  
And there I was, at Little Prodigy's DayCare Center.

I turned and walked away pretending to be studying my shoes, choosing not to acknowledge the sign or the cars zooming past me on 82. Couldn't remember what I was doing there, because I just started walking without any specific place in mind. As a destination, I mean. Usually I'll fly if I figure that I'd rather be somewhere else. Traveling on foot takes too long for me. Picked the wrong Sonic the Hedgehog character for that.

See, what was bothering me was this: Little Prodigy's DayCare Center. Like it guarantees that they'll turn your child into a little prodigy. Raise its intelligence and creative abilities so it can become successful and happy without you having to spend the time on it.

What I mean is: I saved the world so that way parents would have the right to pay someone else to take care of their children.

Fuck, they'll get what's coming to them. Everybody knows that daycare centers are just a way for child molesters to have access to your children to use in Satanic rituals, or whatever it is they're into these days. Child pornography. For fifteen dollars an hour you can pay for the fat sweaty children's entertainer who lives down the street to put Little Joe's Tab A into Little Suzy's Slot B, film the whole thing and put it on the internet.

But thinking that is bitter. Morose. Pointless. It doesn't make me feel any better or any more validated.

Guess that no amount of distancing will help me. I'm not sure how to move past it. I guess even after all the work I've done it's still an unresolved issue. Even heroes get the blues sometimes. Who watches the watchmen, ha ha.

That's not funny. I'm not funny.

Sometimes when I feel like I'm depressing or ranting at people, I'll just change the subject. My emotions make me feel uncomfortable. Nonsense is my defense mechanism.

This is all I can really do, is talk about it. It sucks, I know. I can't make you care. But the world would be a much better place if we could just care for each other.

I don't know why this is important.  
I'll decide that later.


	4. 4

There's something outside.  
It's trying to get in.

* * *

Dark room.  
It's always dark in here.  
There is no noise, save for the hum of the ceiling fan.  
Its turning scatters big strands of dust into the air. A dirty cyclone.

Dust is mostly dead skin.  
Every seven years all the skin cells in your body are replaced.

Every seven years you can look forward to a whole new you.

The light switch is off.  
Flipping it illuminates the lights on the floor.  
Around the desk.  
Around the sickly looking houseplants in the corners.  
From here you can see me.  
I'm smiling, wide.  
My eyes are always open.  
Tears running down my cheeks.

It's beautiful.  
Preserved here forever.

I always have a big smile on my face.

* * *

Forty past four in the morning.  
The sky outside is light purple. The street is mercury green.

Everything is bright now. Even at night.

Scribbling on my notepad with one hand, sipping my coffee with the other. I'm a machine.

Diner coffee is diner coffee. You know the kind. Don't expect anything special if you're getting free refills. Good enough for me, though, as long as I keep my flask ready. Whisky goes great with Folgers. The best part of waking up is getting drunk.

Station Square is an overgrown resort city on the coast. Sure, it's got a few high-rises and a lot of people living in it, but it's mostly beach bum territory. Its own culture, separate from Mobotropolis. You drive on 69 South and then branch off west on 17 South and you'll hit beach eventually. This highway eventually turns right into downtown Station Square. Bad for traffic. Tends to get backed up.

No, 469 doesn't go anywhere near here.

So why am I in Station Square, then? That's what you're thinking, right? That's what I'm thinking. Because I don't know why I'm in Station Square. I felt like going to Station Square. Maybe I needed a change of scenery or something.

This story isn't about the highway anymore.

Nobody cares about the highway anymore, not now that the world is ending. Not now that the first and final sign of the apocalypse appeared in our sky two days ago at exactly 5:40 in the afternoon.

And no one seems to be taking it too badly. At least not the waitress here; she's still as perky as she'll ever be. But then again, she does have the head of a tapeworm.

She comes back again, waving the tentacles around her single eye. Her nametag reads "Betty" and her breasts are large and lopsided.

"You decided yet, hon'?" The closest mouth to me begins dripping with a strange blue liquid. So unnatural blue, it almost looks like cleaning fluid. A few drops land on my table. None in my coffee, thank god.

"Fr. Uh, fren-" My brain and my mouth are too drunk to deal with this. "French toast, please."

"You've got good taste, hon'." A solid stream of bleach drool falls on the table. "Kirby's French Toast is the best French Toast I ever had."

"Oh, uh, okay." Take another sip of my Irish coffee as the abomination walks away. She has a pretty nice ass for having a face like that.

Kirby's Diner. Only place open 24/7 in Station Square for the underage. I've checked. Pretty good place: nice booths, good service for the whole parasite-waitress thing. If you're asking yourself What kind of a diner would hire such an abomination? I have your answer: equal opportunity. Think about it.

Kirby's slogan: It's harder to be unhappy when you're eating at Kirby's. I'm pretty sure that's ripped straight out of Vonnegut.

Kirby himself is a portly human with one especially comely feature: the head of a bat. Wrinkled up nose and all. I can hear him in the kitchen, screeching. Echolocation, or something.

This is when you start asking me: why does everyone suddenly have grotesque animal heads? I don't know. This trend just started, so I'm trying to ignore it.

The guy sitting at the bar has an exposed skull with curled horns on the sides, like a steer. Every time he opens his mouth to speak he spits out a plume of fire. The human couple sitting in the booth next to mine have the head of pigs and what appears to be bleeding wounds all around their neck. The guy sitting by the door waiting for someone has a cobra for a head. Occasionally it hisses and spreads its hood. The human teenager sitting by the jukebox and examining his switchblade keeps growing fur on his face then shedding it all off, the fur keeps on growing back and falling off. Outside there's a hobo with the head of a rabbit. Zombies, cardinals, robots, termites. It's all a little disconcerting, but it's nothing I'm too worried about.

The question is: Am I crazy if I know that what I'm seeing isn't real?

I mean, I'm not screaming at them. Not raving at them about how their faces are all fucked up or how there's a hole in the sky and we're doomed. Not as crazy as those who went and joined the doomsday cult throng.

Maybe right now I'm trying to figure out where this story is going.  
I could interview people. I could interview members of the doomsday cult.

But it's already 5 in the morning and I'm not even in Mobotropolis.

I pick up a spoon, dip it in Betty's leftover drool, and start spreading it around the table. It's incredibly viscous. Like I'm trying to stir cement with a spoon.

"Here's your French Toast," the parasite drops my plate right in the middle of the bright blue puddle like she doesn't notice it. Probably because it's not really there. "Enjoy. You can come pay up at the front."

Just like judgment day.

Ha ha ha ha ha.  
Okay, yeah, that's pretty gay but I'm keeping it in regardless. This is because I do what I want.

Everybody: I do what I want. So fuck you.

Like not sleeping.  
And not being at home.

And isolating myself.

My brain is a broken record, see.

No, wait, that's not a good way to describe it. I'd call it trained. To do what? To humiliate myself.

For every up there's a down. Every time I make some kind of progress with myself, I'm trained to point out my shortcomings. Self-sabotage. Like I said: I'm independent and a strong-willed individual, so then I immediately think about how I stay up all night and stay out of my house and stay away from people. This immediately makes me feel abnormal.

So now, why do you think I do that? Low self-esteem? Self-hatred?

Or self-improvement. There I go being optimistic again.

Something's really wrong with me.  
Or is something really wrong with everyone else?

There's a loud splash and coffee hits my face. Like something's fallen off the ceiling and landed in my drink. When I get done wiping my face off with my napkin, I fish the thing out with my fork.

What was in my mug is a flat, red, hairy object.  
When I look at it now I realize it's somebody's scalp.

"Betty. Hey, Betty." With my hands cupped around my mouth. "Do you think I could get a clean mug?"

* * *

This is important.  
So pay attention.

Aristotle once said that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. This quote in turn gave birth to the Gestalt school of psychology. Gestalt being German for "shape". It was radical for its time although it doesn't seem as radical now, because when it was first thought up people could honestly barely tell their perception of self from their assholes.

Basically the Gestalt school says this: ones perception of everything is influenced by everything. Everything happening in their body. Their biochemical structure, their physical structure, their mental structure. All of it affects you. Even the way you're feeling right now, it's because of all these triggers in your body. Let's say you're angry. Let's say you think you're angry because your girlfriend won't put out. You think you're only angry because of that, but you could also be angry because you haven't been getting enough sleep, and you haven't been eating enough. In general, your heart rate is increased and that makes you angrier. Your adrenaline is pumping when you fight with her. And when you go to do something else, let's say that you go to the bar and drink with your friends. When you drink alcohol, you start to get depressed. Your anger inverts with all the extra adrenaline in your body that you're slowly dampening with alcohol. You talk about your girlfriend troubles with your friends. You forget how to have a good time, even though a week ago you were rollicking and laughing like any other douchebag at the bar.

See?  
Get it?

I'll put it in more scientific terms. The Gestalt school has these two theoretical principles. One, there's the Principle of Totality, which states that "the conscious experience must be considered globally because the nature of the mind demands that each component be considered as part of a system of dynamic relationships." Second, there's the Principle of Psychophysical Isomorphism, which theorizes that there is a link between what you perceive and what goes on physically between your neurons.

That last one is especially important.

What goes on in your brain affects what and how you perceive things and vice-versa.  
Remember this.

* * *

"Where do you wanna do this?"

I don't know. I've never done this before. Where do you usually go?

"Do you have anywhere to stay? A hotel room or something?"

Can we go to your place?

"Well, uh," she hesitates. "All right. Fine."

It's not like I'm gonna murder her or anything. Although I guess I could, and I'd probably get away with it. The world is ending anyway.

So I bought a whore. There's no way I'm gonna die a virgin. Gotta experience it at least once, even if I'm paying for it. The world is ending anyway.

There's no point in waiting around for anything. The world is ending anyway.

Her place is in the suburbs. It's surprising to me, really. I guess I've never really been to the suburbs, much. Rows of similar looking houses, cramped up next to each other. Giant flat patches of grass in front.

For lack of anything better to say, I ask her: Have you lived in Station Square all your life?

"Most of it, yeah." Then silence.

I could connect with her. I could ask her what she thinks about the hole in the sky. Hell, I could ask her what she thinks about the new highway. But it doesn't really matter right now.

What's your name?

"You really want to know?"

C'mon. Don't be like that.

"It's Fiona."

Fiona. Fiona Fox.

"Yeah. That's my name."

I like it.

She hums. "Well," she says. I don't know what she means by that.

I think that the worst part of dealing with people is the ambiguity. There are just some parts of people that you're not supposed to ever understand. Some people can deal with that ambiguity, though. They call it mystery. They get excited by it. I just call it inefficient. I get frustrated.

It's my own inability to cope with this that frustrates me the most.

I am afraid of rejection, even by people I pay to like me. You'd think that hookers would try to make you feel better about yourself. You'd think that would be part of the job. I'm sure some of them work at it and can fake empathy. Fiona's not one of them.

And I can't be Sonic and have everybody automatically like me. If I were him, whores would probably throw themselves at me. Oh jesus, you're Sonic. Let me rub you with my tits. This one's for free. But for the rest of us, there's no such thing as a free fuck.

"Come on, I'm in this building," she nods towards an apartment building. Looks more like a prison from the outside. It's tall and lacks detail. A giant cube with some windows stuck in it. Fiona doesn't even try to act sexy, just waves at me to follow her. I guess I shouldn't be expecting much, I'm just paying her for her time.

The inside of the apartment building smells like something's burning. Smells like a slaughterhouse caught on fire. I'm already feeling sick to my stomach and this isn't really helping any.

Fiona leads me down the hall to her apartment. Second door on the right, in case any of you want to visit her. It's just a small four-roomer. Living room, kitchen, bedroom. LDK. A closet off the bedroom for the bathroom. No bed frame, just the mattress on the carpet.

Her room is lit up by Christmas lights. It's comfortable but still a little unnerving. Shadows move across the walls. Headlights from the highway with each passing car. It's more than a little unnerving, now.

Uh, do you think I could use your bathroom?

"No," she says. Brusquely, almost as if she's pissed off at me for some reason.

Why not?

"Are you in any danger of going in the near future?"

I guess I can hold it? I just thought it would be considerate, uh, considering, well. My words are starting to fuck up in my head.

"Come on, let's just do this really quickly and get it over with." I guess she's uncomfortable with me in her apartment, or something.

I don't really know what to make of it all, I guess.

"You got a condom?"

I don't have a condom.

"You don't have a condom? Jesus. Fine, you can use one of mine. But it's extra."

I couldn't buy a condom, because I'm not old enough to buy condoms. Not that she knows that, because when she asked me I swore I was twenty. Forgive me for lying. I won't have enough time to turn twenty, much less thirteen.

How much extra?

"We'll get to payment afterwards. What do you want me to do?"

What do you usually do?

"God, it's like talking to a twelve year old," Fiona's losing her patience. "I'll go down on you and then let you go to town for a cool hundred."

All right.

She strips in the near dark, and even though I can barely see anything I get hard. She has nice tits and I'm a tits man.

I pull down my pants. She crawls over to me on her hands and knees, staring at me, and I feel kind of embarrassed. It's not like being stared at by somebody who wants this, it's like being stared at by somebody who got stuck in traffic on their way to work.

Having a mouth on your dick feels exactly like having a mouth on your dick. It's not that hard to distinguish between lips and tongue but it seems like there's never enough of it to make it any good. She does this weird thing where she tugs on her foreskin slightly with her teeth and it doesn't feel that good.

This could've been better. Special, maybe. Magical, even. But it's just what it is, without being more or less. Sorry to disappoint you all.

I put the condom on and it feels like having my dick shrink-wrapped in kelp. Slimy and tight in all the wrong ways. She spreads herself out on the bed and pretends to look interested. Her eyes are unfocused on me, which means she's bored. Her legs are wide open and the smell of burning meat gets stronger, and I start to feel like I'm going to vomit but I want this to go quickly.

Penetrating a vagina feels exactly like penetrating a vagina. She's not that tight and I'm not that thick. Just throwing a hot dog down a hallway. She doesn't even say anything as I do it. Lies back and thinks of Mobius, I guess. My dick twitches with each of my heartbeats and her pussy twitches with each of hers.

Humping is hard work, I blame myself for not being in shape. My chest is burning and I'm starting to wheeze, but I'm trying to get to the finish line quickly so I can cover her tits with the only ejaculation she really cares about: greenbacks from my wallet.

I want to get out of here. I really don't like this at all.

The smell of burning meat is getting more and more pungent and my stomach is feeling worse and worse. Blood retreats from the place it really matters and now it feels like I'm trying to push a wet rag through the eye of a needle.

The room gets smoky, I can't focus on anything. Rub my hands up and down in her fur, trying to grab onto something, but she's falling apart, her fur and muscle coming off in my hands, strands of tissue thin as spider webs from her body. Her face is melting off, blistering and bubbling and splitting from her skull, rags of her skin coming off her and turning into grey ash. Her eyes look concerned before they blister over.

"Is something wrong?" she asks. That's when her brains explode out of her ear.

Losing it but not in the right way. I turn just in time to throw up all over her floor.

"Ew, gross," the charred corpse exclaims. Backs away on the bed. "Stu get your ass in here."

I'm still heaving and sobbing, trying not to inhale too much of the smoke, when the bathroom door slams open. Somebody walks over me and sticks what feels like a gun to my back. And that's why she wouldn't let me use her bathroom.

"Fucking tweakers," this guy whom I'm assuming is called Stu. I can feel some of his liquefied innards hit me in the back and I puke a little bit more.

"Take his wallet Stu, take his wallet. How much money does he have?"

"Just two hundred. Cheap fucker."

"Goddammit. That's the last time I pick up some kid from the street."

"You say that every time."

His gun hits me in the back of my head and I land face forward in the little pile of puke I made for them.

"What are we going to do with him now, Fiona?"

My mind flashes with the pain. I think: What would Sonic do? But that's the old me talking. The one I thought I had killed. I don't want to think about Sonic. I don't want to try to be like him anymore. I don't know why I do this to myself.

The old Tails would let himself be bossed around. The old Tails would go along with anything. The old Tails would trust anyone.

I push myself off the floor.

"Stay down faggot, if you know what's good for you." I finally get a look at Stu. He's burning, too. Flesh and fur falling off of him, soft tissues turning into liquid and pooling on the floor. He's got my wallet in one hand and his gun in the other. Fiona's still on the bed, getting her melting fat all over my twenties.

Fuck this. Lesson learned. Stay the hell away from whores. Nothing but tits and trouble, huhuhuhuh.

Trying to control my stomach heaving. I throw myself through their window. Glass shatters all around me, some of it cutting into me. I hear Fiona shriek all high-pitched and slow. Harmonizing with the sound of a gun being fired. The bullets all miss me. Stu's a terrible shot when his flesh is melting off, apparently. I haven't flown in a while, and it feels like I've forgotten in the shock of everything.

Come on, Tails, you can do this.

Slowly my body realizes its purpose. My tails spin again. And I'm gone, flying over the houses in the suburbs.  
Streetlights flying by me, burning. Turning into streaks receding into the distance as I pick up speed.

The sound of wind whooshing by me echoing, fading off into nothing.  
The world below me falls away and turns into black.

A distant low hum.

Can't see anything. Except the pure white hole in the dark sky.

We all may be doomed, but I'm not going to burn with you.

* * *

I'd never been robotocized. A lot of us were, but I guess I was one of the lucky ones. I can't say I wanted it. Obviously nobody wanted it. But the experience is something I wouldn't ever be able to shake. This feeling of lack of control, but not caring about it. Lack of emotions. Not wanting anything, not even thinking about yourself. You can't simulate that.

One of the concepts in early philosophy was the zombie. Not a reanimated corpse that eats living flesh. But rather a being that looks and behaves exactly like us, but doesn't feel or think. A philosophical zombie. All the physical processes without the mental processes.

Before robotocization, we had no idea that p-zombies could really exist. Then Charles Hedgehog, Sir Charles Hedgehog. Poor Uncle Chuck. He found out a way to make it a reality. He found a way to make it. And Robotnik took that idea and improved it, found out a way to control it. It was brilliant, in a twisted way.

We found the papers on it, between Uncle Chuck's original research and Robotnik's improvements on it. Theses, essays, diagrams and schematics. The machine was ruined in the final stretch but we found a way to rebuild it. Reverse the process. Robots went in, one by one, and citizens came out. It was like a tingling sensation, they said. A return of feeling to parts that hadn't been used in a long time. Kind of like falling asleep.

The process is painful in itself. Bunnie would tell us how painful it was, to be robotocized. Especially how she was only partially robotocized. While several of her limbs and her lower body was put out of commission, her brain stem was left alone, not replaced with a nerve block and a computer chip. The pain was chronic. She could control it but only for short periods of time. She couldn't be overworked.

But the robots. Ex-Robians, as they like to be called. They didn't feel a thing. Any pain they would've had was only temporary. Experiences they had while they were robotocized they could still recall, but it felt like a dream to them. A nightmare, to some. They'd dream about it. Many reported feeling that they had to return to work, that they were still receiving orders.

And Sally spent a lot of the government's income on a free group therapy program. To put the thoughts out of people's heads. To save the city from rampaging Mobians going postal, believing they had to fulfill orders to kill everybody. The movement for free therapy was criticized, of course, like everything in government is criticized. No one can say if therapy would be effective. No one can say if Robians can ever be fully rehabilitated.

But they should feel lucky to be alive.

We saved three million. We could only save three million. There were six million more, at least.

Including poor Uncle Chuck.

And the King. King Acorn.

And my parents.

I have no idea who killed them. We have no way of knowing who was who before the reversal. But they weren't there when the Robotocizer stopped and the smoke cleared.

But I can't blame them. They weren't ever there.

* * *

Come to. On a bench.  
Sea air. The distant sound of seagulls. Grey-blue sky, relatively dark.

In front of me stretching into forever is water. Water rolling onto sand, crashing with every tremor of the ground.

I'm so tired.

The real scary part is that I'm starting to get used to this. Waking up in strange places with no recollection of how I got there. Only being shown what's relevant instead of the whole picture. I live in a story and the events in it seem unconnected. Only living from an action to an action.

It's morning, or it should be morning. I have no idea what time it is. It's been dark for too long now, much longer than it should be. The sun should be rising in the sky, but it's not. There's only the hole. The pure white hole. Not reflecting or radiating or absorbing light. Just a hole.

I woke up but I don't feel refreshed. Doesn't even feel like I've slept at all. Maybe I haven't slept. Maybe I've just been sitting here staring at the ocean. Waiting for my brain to come back. Disassociation. The bottoms of my eyes have weights attached to them. I can barely keep them open, but I can't sleep.

I'm so very tired.

I'm tired of the hallucinations. I'm tired of the hole in the sky. I'm so tired of everything, and I just want it to stop. I just want to sit in my dark room. My dark room where I am safe, where I am hidden from everyone, where no one can hurt me anymore.

My ass is sore from all the work. I haven't flown in a long time. Maybe even a year now.

But I kick my tails into motion anyway, and lift up into the air. As high as I can go, trying to fly into the only point of light in the sky. It doesn't get any closer. I try harder but it doesn't get any closer. Moving away from the bench, away from the shore. Away from Station Square. The hole never gets any closer. It just sits there in the sky. Waiting for something, for someone. Maybe it's waiting for me, but I'm coming to it and why isn't it getting any closer? I'm not done yet, but I will be soon. Past the break line, so the waves won't carry me back to shore. My tails stop. Everything stops for one beautiful moment, then I fall.

Close my eyes, and all I can see is the hole. The light at the end of the dark tunnel.

I'm falling into the hole, and I can feel myself hit the water and the water sucks me down, down down down underneath it to the hole at the bottom of the ocean straight to the center of the planet.

No, that didn't really happen. But for a second there I could've sworn that it had. I'm still sitting on the bench. I can feel it underneath me. Trying to figure out what's happening to me, what's wrong with me. It happened but it never really happened.

I don't know what's happening. Something's happening to everybody, but I can't tell what it is. I'm witness to a program failing, an experiment gone horribly wrong. Somewhere in here, Robotnik is still alive and messing with all of us. Ruining our lives. Ruining our minds.

I don't know how I know this, and I don't know where he is. I don't even know where I am.

I don't know anything.  
I don't know anything.  
I don't know anything at all.

I can feel the tears streaming down my face. There should be light. Light coming from the sun at the very edge of the horizon. Light coming from the sun starting to rise.

But there isn't any.

Somebody please, help me.

A flashlight hits me in the face. Warm and blinding.

"Excuse me sir," somebody says from behind me. It's a cop. A cop or a park ranger or something. Fuck if I know.

"This beach is closed. Do you have any identification on you?"

Somebody please help me.

Identification?

"You know, your identification card."

Somebody, please help me. Somebody.

It was in my wallet, and my wallet got taken from me. Stolen. I got robbed. I don't have a card.

"Sir I'm going to have to ask you to come with me down to the station."

Please help me.

What for?

"For breaking the law."

Somebody. Anybody.

What law?

"All public parks and beaches are closed from sunset to sunrise. You're going to have to come with me."

But the sun is rising.

"You're resisting arrest. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can and will be used against you in a–"

Somebody please help me.

"What?"

What.

"What did you just say?"

I said the sun is rising.

"No, after that."

I didn't say anything.

"You said: Somebody please help me."

Somebody please help me?

Nobody will help you.

His fat neck is like soft putty in my hands. I give it a good squeeze, hold onto it, trying to shape it into something new.  
His skin is turning blue. It's freezing.

"Gack [sic], gackt [sic], gkk [sic]," the police officer tries to tell me something. I can't understand it but I'll include it in my expose anyway. His Adam's Apple bounces underneath my fingers. He tries to blink but his eyes are almost bulging out, and his eyelids can't connect anymore. His hands flail around uselessly.

I want this to stop, so it does. There is no policeman anymore. Nothing. There never was in the first place. He was just a bad idea, so I stopped thinking about him.

I'm not sure how I did that.

There is nothing wrong with the world. Robotnik is in his heaven, and all is right with the world.  
Something is wrong with me.  
Something is very, very wrong with me. And I want to find out what.

The world tremors. Quickly shakes forward and backwards.  
I'm thrown from the bench and land in the sand. Cold and wet and painful.

And there's light.  
I can see suddenly. My hands covered in sand. The skin under my fur starting to swell from the hard impact.

Look up at the horizon but there is no sun. Not even light. Because that isn't where the light is coming from.

The hole. It's changed. It looks like a rip in the sky now. A widened smile. The earthquake was it cracking open. Oh god, it's cracking open now. The gates of heaven are opening.

For the first time in years, I start praying.

* * *

You can't ever go home, Tails.  
You never had a home.

I finally get it now.


	5. 5

It's every Mobian for himself.  
And may Robotnik take the hindmost.

Hahaha. You get it?

They said it was going to start cooling down really quickly now that the sun seems to have disappeared but it's gotten hotter instead. The city is hot and inexplicably humid. I don't think I've ever felt humidity like this. Not out here. Much further inland in Megalopolis but not out here. I don't understand.

The streets are bleeding together. I can't tell the difference between the buildings and the sidewalk or the streetlights and the trees or the shopfronts and the brick walls. It all looks the same. Bright colors and dark skies. Stretching into eternity.

My legs are shaking. I'm shaking all over.  
But I'm still walking.

Things zoom by me. Amorphous and indefinite. I can't tell if they're moving or if I'm moving.

I'm just walking and laughing. This is the best I've felt in a long time, for some reason. My stomach is filled with butterflies. Happy tremors and flutters.

You know they never figured out why we feel that way when we get nervous or excited? It's one of the functions of the body that's still a mystery. One theory is that when you're excited and releasing adrenaline, blood pulls away from the stomach to go to the muscles. And what you're really feeling when you feel that fluttering is your stomach shutting down temporarily.  
Basically it's the equivalent of a heart attack, only in your stomach.  
It's a lot less romantic when you put it that way.

It feels like my body's slowly starting to shut down. But I like it. My heart's beating faster than ever before. Put my hand to my chest only to find that it's less of a heartbeat and more of a seizure. My blood is short on oxygen so occasionally I start panting. But it's fine, it's all fine. We're just going to die, is all.

I mean, I'm just going to die.  
Because I'm the only thing that really exists.

There are a few crashes in the distance. The bright red heat of fire. People carrying torches and rocks. Smashing windows of shops and stores. They're meaningless, all of it meaningless. The shops and stores and economy means nothing now. The world is ending. Possessions mean nothing, either, but some people won't ever be able to let go of them.

I am the only thing that really exists here.  
I am God.  
God is my father, and I'm the son of God. And all of reality is just my test. I'm on the cross, dying for millions.

There's a cracking sound and then a bang. Some kind of gunfire. Screams. Somebody yells: "I got you, you little shit." Starts firing some more. Another gun starts in from somewhere else, this one an automatic. Faster-paced fire. A chorus of bullets all at once. People run by. I don't know why they're running or where they're going, but I just keep on walking.

One of them is on the sidewalk, gurgling and thrashing around. Trying to keep moving, away from something. There's a huge hole in her back. Blood is pooling all around her and now I'm splashing in it. She stops gurgling.

Touch her with one of my feet, then kick her. Flip her over. Where she would have a face, well, instead of facial features there is nothing but skin. Smooth as a polished rock, not even a snout or a mouth.

Everything is losing its meaning, its definition. Even people. The weak and the insignificant are first. She's lost to me forever.  
You could argue that she never had any significance in the first place.

Keep walking. There's yet another corpse in the street. This one, I couldn't tell if she had no face either because her head's been blown off. Completely in two. I'm not sure what would've done it, but she's holding a shotgun. In one hand, pointing behind her.  
Her blood is beginning to drain into the storm drain. One crimson trail.

I pity her. I pity them both. I pity everybody. It's what the son of God must do. Pity everyone.  
I am starting to lose my opinions of humanity now. I'm sorry that you all suffer. I'm so sorry that you all have to continue suffering, but all living is suffering. Suffer the little children. Forgive them for they know not what they do.

I don't know where everybody's going, but I know there's a lot of people. Rushing towards the body of the faceless young girl on the sidewalk. Their sobs and whimpers echo off the buildings into the empty street. There are still some lights in some of the apartments. People are still in them, watching television. Probably with the doors blockaded.  
I love you all.

Sirens arise from the closer side of the city. The screams change color, change back into fear again. I have no desire to stick around and watch what happens.

My thoughts are running together. I'm not sure why. I wonder what it would be like if I walked forever. Walked right out of Mobotropolis. This is really bizarre, I've never had this happen before. My shoes would wear down and my feet would burn if I walked forever. It's like I can't concentrate on anything. My legs would explode from all the walking and shower the desert with my insides, and vultures would pick the flesh from my bones. Jesus Tails you're really going crazy aren't you. I can see it replaying over and over, my legs boiling and exploding in showers of muscle and soft tissue but I have this great big ol' smile on my face, exploding over and over and over again. Gory and cheery imagery all in one.

I feel like I'm on acid. I hate acid. No, I don't hate acid. I love acid. I hate and love acid simultaneously. If you can't understand it, don't you hate and love your girlfriend? Your parents? You hate them when they makes you angry or sad, and you love them when it makes you happy. As hard as you try you can never be sure of anything but yourself. You're selfish, all of you are selfish but so am I and we're all selfish so why am I pointing the damn finger? Jesus, why am I writing this down. Try to control yourself, Miles. Make that shit your spinach.

Started thinking myself into a downwards spiral. That's no good. Have to keep myself above water here.

Find myself in a park. Not entirely sure when I arrived here, but since I'm not exactly in the most coherent state of mind at the moment I think that can be excused.

There were lots of parks in Mobotropolis before Robotnik's invasion. During his coup he tore most of them up and poisoned the few that he left out of neglect. Since we reclaimed the city we haven't been able to spend much time fixing them up, so most of them are still as brown as when we reclaimed them.

Sit on a bench. Stare at the brown grass, not sure why I'm looking at it. There are voices coming from the ground. Try to tune them out. I don't want to listen to them.

All around the city the lights start blinking out. Suddenly. The sounds of machines powering down all through the neighborhood. The voices from the earth get louder. Whispers turning into murmurs.

They're asking for help.

A boot steps in my view.  
Look up.

There's somebody standing in front of me. Even though it's dark I can still tell he has no face. Smooth as a polished stone. I think I already used that analogy but I'm using it again.

"'allo. Do I not know you?" the faceless being asks.

I don't think so, I tell him.

"I think I am remembering who you are. You look like, how you say, like I have been seeing you before some time ago?"

A fire starts behind him, backlighting him. Others are lighting torches. Some people have flashlights. Some people have rope. Some of them have guns.  
All of them are slipping burlap sacks over their heads.

"No matter. I can tell you are a safe. You are an, OK. Not a robo."

You can tell?

"Of course I can tell." His voice is unpleasantly cheerful. Feels like I'm getting shanked in the eyeballs with a happy-face pin. "I can tell just by the look in your face."

He starts to put his own burlap sack over his head. It has holes cut in it, where his eyes and snout would be. They seem to cling to his face, like there's something there and I'm just not seeing it.

"We are taking back our sociehtee [sic]. We will not be standing any longer for this harmful inteh-grashun [sic] that is destroying us. Are you with us, my brother?"

I have no idea what the hell he's saying. His accent is too heavy. Without waiting for my response, he drops a mask in my lap. Extends his hand.

Take it. Put on the mask. Not sure what's going on, but for some reason I'm too curious to just walk away from this. I have no weapons. Not even a torch, like the others.

In the humidity it feels like the mask is gluing itself to my face. Constricting my breathing. Feeling claustrophobic in my own skin. I've already lost my face once in this goddamn trip. I'm not looking forward to losing it again.

The man from before, he stands behind me.  
"All of my brothers and sisters who have been gathering here tonight," he shouts. Turn around. He's got his hands cupped around where his mouth would be.  
"It is time that we take back our city from the monsters living among us. Let us move onward."

Others in the crowd cheer. Then momentum starts moving them. With aim but directionless. Around the city, towards ruin.

I get it. I get what this is about. But I'm not going to stop it. Couldn't even if I wanted to, but I don't want to. To be honest I'm barely feeling anything at all. Not even fear. Just pity.

Stumble around in the group. Can barely keep up. My head's not really in the game right now.

The mob storms an apartment building. Tears down the doors and everything. No doorman. If there is he's probably cowering under his desk. The mob moves down the hallways like a flood seeking equilibrium. That's what it reminds me of. Roar of angry voices becomes the roar of the ocean. Seeking things to swallow.

This is going to be like shooting fish in a barrel. Three million ex-Robians. There's a high chance one of them lives in every apartment here.

Those at the front of the mob bust through apartment doors. The building itself is fairly run down. Most of the people aren't here. Abandoned apartments. The perfect port for ex-Robians. Sometimes they won't get rented to.

A bang and a scream.  
"We got one, we got'un [sic]." Shouts from the front of the mob. They're holding a faceless bird by her arms, dragging her body along the ground.  
Sudden whoops of victory beating polyrhythmic against each other. Then the crowd shifts the other direction, retreating back to the sea.

"I didn't do nothing, I swear. I swear," she's moaning. As they drag her by me. The leader of the mob, the one who gave me the mask, he's fashioning the rope into a noose.

Couldn't do anything to stop this. This needs to happen. There are always martyrs for everybody's cause.  
It doesn't have to be her but if it's not her it's going to be somebody else anyway. Somebody else would die.

Nauseous. Hot pain in my stomach. Burping.  
But I'm running and trying to keep up with the crowd. People are shouting and jeering. People are kicking her, punching her. For the nothing that she's done. She only blubbers through it all. Spits blood occasionally. Cuts all over her faceless head bleeding too. "Please," she keeps saying. "Please, no."

They take her back to the street. Underneath every green streetlight hangs a noose. I know that isn't possible, but I have to take what I can get here.

"There must be payment for our blood shed. In oil," the leader of the pack shouts to us.

Her head in the noose and she's trying to kick them off but she can't. She's entirely overwhelmed. No more coherent words are said. The rope is raised. Kicks a little, but then stops. Her faceless head purples.

How ironic. Paying violence back with senseless violence. Just one of the many faults of being human. Violence doesn't beget anything except more violence.  
But I forgive you all. It's not your fault.

The sound of people cheering. Deafening. Grows to such a decibel that it no longer sounds human. I can't think about anything anymore. All I can do is watch. Her swollen head turning away from me. Towards me, away from me, towards me, away from me.

* * *

My brain is malfunctioning. I feel like a lot of people, uh, well.  
Actually, I'm positive everybody's brain malfunctions from time to time.

Kurt Vonnegut believed we were all machines. We proved him right, in that we all can become machines. The difference between us and robots are very slim. The brain just logs data and can access it at lightning-fast speeds. Your body's just organic hardware.

69% of all Mobians believe in the soul. The soul that transcends the dying body and enters the afterlife.

What do I believe in? I don't know. I don't know if I believe in the soul. I don't know if I believe in the afterlife. I don't know if I want to believe in an afterlife.

All I'd want it to be is a dark room. A dark room where I can keep myself separate from everyone. An eternity there wouldn't be so bad. Just useless brain signals sending themselves down a dead power line, trying to reach a disconnected database.

* * *

I'd like to say this just for the record. I mean, fuck, a lot of this is just for the record and all of it is kind of important. Or parts of it are. But I like this one the most of all. It's the most primitive and really strikes a chord in everyone.

There was one ancient philosopher who came up with a thought experiment that was such an absolute and timeless allegory that it basically trumps anything else I've said in this story.  
His name was Plato and his thought experiment is called the Allegory of the Cave.

Imagine there's a cave that's so deep sunlight cannot reach the back of it. It's not that hard to imagine but important to remember. Close to the end of the cave there's a huge underground chamber with a castle-like structure in the center. Prisoners have been chained to the outside since their birth and have been constrained such that they can't move their arms or legs. Their gaze is constantly fixed on the walls of the cave.

On top of the castle-like structure is an enormous fire that the prisoners cannot see. Patrolling the turrets are guards wearing ornate helmets that resemble gigantic animal heads. The prisoners cannot see them either, but thanks to the fire behind them their shadows are cast on the walls of the cave. That's all the prisoners have ever seen, is just the shadows on the walls of the caves. Whereas we take shadows to be reflections of real things, Plato argues that the prisoners would believe the shadows to be real things.

All knowledge of the world would be assumed on the basis of what they've seen. They've always had those shadows. Why wouldn't the shadows be real things? Maybe some people would even guess some kind of pattern. Which shadow comes next? If he got it right, people would think he was pretty smart.

If it hasn't hit you, it's an allegory for the way humanity perceives the universe. I'll apply it to real life behavior I've witnessed. Suppose you shortchange somebody at the In-N-Out Drive Thru and then later that week your cat gets hit by a car. Both were honest accidents. You didn't wish any ill-will on the guy working the drive thru, you just realized a little too late that you didn't have enough money to make the price. The driver of the car that ran over your cat hadn't meant to do it either. But in your grief of losing your cat, you'll figure that the cat was meant to be run over. You'll figure that because you shortchanged In-N-Out, God saw fit to enact retribution and took your cat from you. Short on cash, life cut short. You feel that there's some kind of connection between the two. Bad deeds beget bad deeds.

You'd be surprised just how many people subscribe to that way of thinking.

Not that it's necessarily wrong. Just that it sounds stupid when you're not stuck in the karmic loop. Actions have consequences but consequences don't necessarily effect actions. Now there's some divine figure up there keeping score and pulling strings? You don't want to take responsibility for your own suffering. So you had a cat. It's easy to get attached to cats. They're cute, they tend to make you happy most of the time. Sometimes cats just get run over by cars.

And what about the driver? Was the driver compelled by your behavior at the drive thru or was the driver suffering for their own bad behavior? Maybe they were breaking the speed limit, driving too fast in a residential area. Maybe they couldn't stop in time to hit the cat. Or to spin it in a karmic way, maybe they photocopied a picture of their dick at the office and sent it to their secretary. Maybe they deserved to hit the cat. Maybe the cat deserved to be hit. Maybe the cat ate an immaculately-conceived mouse or let herself get passed around the neighborhood's tomcats one too many times.

You could argue this further, sure. God watches everybody and ties bad karma up to bad karma. But it's just turtles all the way down.

The trick is that what you've been shown is two entirely separate events that have no correlation to each other but you try to draw a parallel between the two because you don't want to believe the universe doesn't revolve around you.

Let's say that one of the prisoners is released. In secret. He is allowed to stand on his own two feet, barring the fact that his muscles have atrophied from disuse. Let's say the soldiers releasing him decide to turn him around, and for the first time in his entire life he sees the other side of the cave. That the wall he was attached to wasn't the whole world, just a castle. That the animals, the gods they had worshiped were just people wearing costumes. That the light from behind them they thought was some window to heaven, it was just a bonfire all this time. Everything he ever thought he knew about the world, well. It turns out he was wrong.

* * *

My room is a mess. A disaster zone. Which is funny, I guess, because I haven't even been in it for days.

Once upon a time not too long ago but not as recently as you might think there was a movie called The Seventh Continent by some pretentious German fuck and it was about a family who led a very normal life but one day decided that they'd had enough and so they destroyed every single piece of furniture in their apartment and ripped up all their money and flushed it down the toilet and then they killed themselves.  
True story, apparently.

I guess it's supposed to be some kind of comment on materialism. The comment being that materialism tends to make people fall into this fantasy that their possessions are extensions of themselves, and then waste a lot of their time and money trying to better themselves through buying expensive things that don't mean anything.

The truth is that I don't really know why I came back here. But I'm feeling like I need to take this out on something.

So I pull out all the clothes I never wear and dump them on the floor. Stomp on the drawers. Smash them to kindling. Splinters. Overturn my desk that I never use. Smash my computer that I've barely touched.

If possessions are an extension of one's self, is destroying them technically committing partial suicide?  
No. And fuck you for thinking so, Tails. Fuck you for writing this stupid fucking report. This whole scene is tangential and comical at best. Has nothing to do with anything.

I'm crying.  
Crying because I'm a damn child. Stop crying Tails, you're a pussy. I had to do this. Because I had to kill this part of myself. Whatever it means to anybody.  
Don't want any of this anymore. Take a swig from my bottle of whisky. Turn around and walk out of the room. Shut the door. It's not mine anymore. I'm giving it up.  
All of this, I'm giving up.

Part of me realizes this is the last time walking from my bedroom down the hallway. I don't know how I feel about it. Relief.

Except Sonic is waiting for me.  
I can imagine this scene is going to be comical too. It's going to sound a lot like a bad breakup. The notion that Sonic and I are in a relationship is as untrue as it is hilarious, you have to admit.

"Tails, I–"  
Then he pauses and looks at me. Concern grows on his face.  
"Is something wrong? Are you okay buddy?"

I'm fine. Never better.

The concern doesn't go away. "Where have you been the last few days?"

Days?

"What, do you even know? You haven't been home in days, Tails. It's been at least two."

What is a day anymore? It's always nighttime outside now.

"Don't fucking change the subject." Sonic is beginning to blur. Like he's jittering or shaking. Part of a movie projector that's falling apart. "I was worried about you. Dammit, I'm still worried about you Tails. What's going on? What the hell are you doing when you're not here?"  
His words. I can hear them but they're taking a while to register.

I just went to Station Square for a little while. And then I spent some time in the inner city. Jesus.

"The inner city? Fuck. Do you know how dangerous it is out there? Ant's gone out of his fucking mind. Started leading some crusade to kill all ex-Robians. People are dying out there, Tails. You could have been killed."

Not really that much different than any other part of my life, Sonic. I can handle myself now. I'm older.

"You're only twelve years old, Tails."

I respond by taking another swig from my bottle of whiskey. Whiskey til I die.

"The fuck are you drinking for."

The fuck aren't you drinking for.  
No, okay, that was immature of me to say.

"Shit. Shit, shit. This is my fault. This really is my fault. I shouldn't have ever let you drink. You don't act it but you're too young. You don't have the ruh-spon-suh-bility [sic] to handle alcohol."

I don't know, Sonic. It doesn't really matter.

"Yes it does matter." Hey, this is what Sonic the Hedgehog sounds like when he's legitimately angry. He sounds an awful lot like a mother.

Well it's not going to matter. I'm never going to be twenty-one. The world is ending, Sonic. There's nothing we can do.

"There is something we can do."

What can we do? What's your goddamned plan?

He doesn't say anything or look any different. Just blurry a little. I sway, feeling like I've been thrown off my center of gravity.

Fuck. I get it. You want to find the Chaos Emeralds.

"Sal called me down to the palace. She wants me to go find them. She wants US to go find them."

Hahaha. Don't make me laugh. I might puke.

"Why the fuck are you laughing? This is real, Tails. This is serious business."

It won't do anything. Finding them isn't going to do anything.

"How do you know that?"

That thing isn't real, Sonic. It's real but it's not real at the same time. It's fantastic. Impossible. Doesn't apply to the rules of this universe.

The hero of the century, his face looks confused. Confused and upset.

It doesn't absorb or reflect light. It doesn't appear to have any physical location either. Yet it stopped the fucking orbit of Mobius. What you're dealing with here is an anomaly.

"An uh-naw-mo-lee [sic]?"

Just forget it.  
Take another swig of the bottle.

"Dammit Miles, that isn't the issue here."

Whoa. I must be in a lot of trouble if you're going to start calling me by my first name, Maurice.

He knows I'm just trying to goad him into fighting with me, so he ignores it. Sonic is smarter than he looks.

He rubs his face, sighs. I'm guessing he hasn't had a whole lot of sleep either. "Look. We can either try to save Mobius or we can sit around waiting to die. Even if it doesn't work, we'll at least have tried."

What's the point in trying if you won't succeed?  
Take another swig from the bottle but he grabs it from me.

Hey.

"What the hell happened to you, Tails," Sonic sez. "I thought you were better than this. When did you become so selfish?"

Selfish?

I'm the one whose selfish? For sacrificing my entire life to help people who can't even take care of themselves?

"What do you mean?"

Look around you, Sonic. Look at these people we've saved. Where are they now? Squatting in apartments. Sleeping on the streets. Hurting each other because they don't want to blame themselves for their own problems. All they do is eat and drink and fuck and kill each other and cry about it. The good ones, they just go to work and come back home. They're not even happy. Nobody's happy, Sonic.

"Dammit, these things take time. Do you think we got to Knothole and it was already there? It took a solid couple of months to even get our bearings. We always knew it was going to take a while to rebuild Mobotropolis, right from when we started planning to retake it from Robotnik, okay?"

But why is nobody trying?

"We are trying. We are trying as hard as we can. But everybody has different ideas on how to do it, okay?"

This is pointless.

"They need you. They need us."

I don't need them.

His lips quiver, like he's trying to stop himself from saying what he wants to say.  
The whole world is shaking.

"Fine," Sonic finally sez. "Then I don't need you anymore."

He turns into a blur and then he's gone.  
He won't come back.

My stomach turns a little. This time it's not a happy feeling.

It's all my fault, isn't it?

I'm sorry, Sonic.  
If you ever read this. I'm sorry.  
You were right. I'm selfish and I'm crazy. I was just angry. I didn't mean it. I do need you. I do need them. I want the world back. For it to go back the way it used to be, when we lived at Knothole and things were better. Sonic I want this all to stop. I want the hole to go away. I want to stop hallucinating, Sonic. Please, make it stop. Make me okay again.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. You're my best friend. You're my only friend. Come back, Sonic.

But he doesn't.

* * *

Sonic the Hedgehog won't be appearing in this story anymore.

* * *

The intersection of 262 and 15 is roughly forty miles north from Albion, and apparently there aren't any close habitations nearby. And that seems weird, having to drive for forty miles just to work at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. But some people will do anything as long as they have a job. I would know most of all.

The only thing around for miles is marshland. A sea of marsh grass. In the summer the place stinks of natural decomposition, stagnant water filled with the dying and dead.

Fill up the car with gas, but there's no one in the dark gas station. So I guess this one's for free.

But of course there's no sun anymore. Just eerie light coming from the heavens that no one can explain. If the world has stopped turning, nobody's felt it.

In the dark you can't see the marshes. There's just nothing off the edge of the road except grass taller than your car. There's a part of me that wishes I could've seen it one last time. Sometimes it's important to keep things like that forever, even if they're not going to have much value anytime soon.

The grass is all going to wilt, soon. Some of it already has. Spreading out on the road. Without the grass, animals will start starving to death. And without animals, we'll start starving to death. There's still some food stocked up but it probably won't last long. Maybe half a year, if we're optimistic and ration it out properly.

I say we like I'm still a part of everything.

If I'm going to die I want to die as far away from Mobotropolis as I possibly can. I don't want any of it anymore. It has nothing to do with me.

I can see it from here, the hole. The rip in the sky. The fissure in the space-time continuum. I still don't know what it means. But now it's steadily growing bigger.

And something inside me tells me that no matter how far I run, I won't outrun it.

* * *

You've been wrong all this time.


End file.
